


One Spared to the Sea

by schweet_heart



Series: Merlin Fic [111]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Declarations Of Love, Doomed Relationship, Idiots in Love, Immortal Merlin, Immortality, Love Confessions, M/M, Muteness, Mythology - Freeform, Mythology References, Sirens, Sleepy Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 09:00:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13900701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schweet_heart/pseuds/schweet_heart
Summary: Only the knowledge of what it will do to Arthur can keep him from opening his mouth, but he can feel the desire for it like a warning, like a shift in the current before a massive storm. One day, the thirst will grow too great. One day he will be forced to speak, and the sound of his voice will sing Arthur to his grave.Written for Camelot Drabble Prompt #303: Loving Monsters.





	One Spared to the Sea

 

When he gets back, Arthur is awake and watching him, his eyes silvered slits in the moonlight, hair rumpled against the blue-white backdrop of his pillow.  
  
“Where did you go?” he asks, in that rough, affectionate voice he uses when he expects no real response. Merlin drops onto the bed and straddles him, Arthur’s arm sliding over his hips, his free hand reaching up to cup Merlin’s face and feel the dampness there.  
  
“You taste of salt,” he murmurs against Merlin’s lips. “Did you go to the ocean?”  
  
Merlin says nothing. Sometimes, when he is in Arthur’s arms like this, he can feel the weight of his voice as it tries to get out, as if the water is inside him, filling him, determined to spill over and drown anyone who gets in its way. Only the knowledge of what it will do to Arthur can keep him from opening his mouth, but he can feel the desire for it like a warning, like a shift in the current before a massive storm. One day, the thirst will grow too great. One day he will be forced to speak, and the sound of his voice will sing Arthur to his grave.  
  
Arthur sighs and rolls his hips, pulling Merlin into him. His cock is hard beneath the blankets, but he moves without any particular haste, as if still half in a dream. Perhaps he is—perhaps he still thinks he is asleep, his hands roaming over an imaginary Merlin’s body, murmuring imaginary endearments into imaginary hair.  
  
Merlin is very real. He kisses Arthur’s mouth, pressing him into the mattress with urgent movements, desperate to know that he is, for now, still alive. Arthur makes a bemused noise but kisses him back, his fingers curling into the slick, wet strands of Merlin’s hair, dislodging a shower of sand onto the bed. It has always seemed strange to Merlin that Arthur has never questioned him, has never seemed confused or curious about his lover’s strange ties to the sea. At worst, he teases Merlin about it sometimes, calling him a sprite—a nymph. A siren. Had he known what horror truly lies beneath Merlin’s skin, he would not treat it so lightly, yet Merlin finds this lack of curiosity strangely refreshing. He has sometimes wondered if Arthur knows, somehow, deep down, that Merlin is the fate that has been stalking him since he was a young child, since the day his mother drowned and begged him not to take Arthur with her.  
  
He had given Arthur all of his mother’s years, and a handful of his own, because Merlin found he could not bear to see such a bright flame extinguished so quickly. In those days, Merlin had merely watched from afar, content to leave Arthur to his human existence, but then Arthur had been the one to approach _him_ on the beach, with that sheepish smile and those half-familiar eyes, and it had seemed—easier to return the fumbling advances, to bully and bicker and tease and shove Arthur down onto the sand and kiss him. Without his voice, he’d had to resort to gestures and write things in the sand to get his point across, but Arthur had understood him like no one else.  
  
When Merlin comes, he is silent, his head bowed over Arthur’s body as if in prayer. Arthur, human as he is, grunts and moans as he ruts against Merlin’s arse and thigh, and his coming is as noisy as an animal’s, slick and wet with heat. Merlin kisses him until the lassitude drags Arthur under, surely as any tide, and then lies down beside him, stroking his finger along the fine lines of Arthur’s face. It has never given him any pleasure to take a life, and he has always made sure to do only what he needs to do in order to survive. But the rules of the sea are not open to negotiation, and Arthur has been living on borrowed time almost since the day that he was born.  
  
“I love you,” Merlin whispers. Arthur stirs in his sleep, frowning slightly as if he’d heard, but Merlin knows he hasn’t. Not yet.  
  
Not yet, but terribly soon.


End file.
